


i have taught you how to fight or fly

by eudaimon



Category: Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein, Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - World War II, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:57:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before you say anything - I know that it couldn't really have ended like this.  But the world is both difficult and beautiful and, maybe somehow, she did make it back through that open window.</p>
<p>Maybe this is what came next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i have taught you how to fight or fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lessthanpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lessthanpie/gifts).



> Two things:
> 
> I want you to know that I reread sections of Code Name Verity in order to write this and _wept bitterly_ , like I did the first time. Secondly, I wanted to write a story that I knew you wanted - that I knew that _only_ you could want. I hope the cross-over works for you. I hope this is a story that you like.
> 
> Happy Yuletide, sweetest girl.

Before you say anything - I know that it couldn’t really have ended like this. I understand that perfectly. But if the world is both difficult and beautiful and if, perhaps, there was one rider, one brave and brilliant man on a small dragon (whose name, say, was Elsie), who rode quick enough and fast enough because somebody, somewhere, had a plan and talked somebody else into letting it happen (and these things do happen, more often than you’d think). And what if there were hands waiting to catch her at the other end? 

I’m just saying that this is a different world. And so things can end differently, if they want. The brain is a complicated engine, much like the heart and it was a long, hard way back but, eventually, there she came, walking ahead of Death triumphantly. Like a lady might. Like a brave girl would. She came back alone, without Queenie or Verity or Eva Seiler by her side. Brought nothing with her but a brave, ridiculous heart. Back there. To them.

By her, I mean me. But there, I mean here. All of that bravery stuff is nonsense, of course, but the fact is that I did make it back to Craig Castle on the edge of winter, with no leaves in the trees and the dragons settling down in the court-yard and that I will also love that man (and his bloody marvellous dragon) forever. Lord knows how we will feed them all, the crews and the dragons and the Irregulars (who eat enough for a horde) besides. I suppose we will find a way; somebody else will deal with it. For now, I’m too faint to think.

Sleep. Like the dead.

*

I know that none of this makes sense. How could it? But it doesn’t matter now. And this does.

*

I wake up screaming and there is someone sitting in the dark beside my bed. For a moment, I am absolutely blind terrified. Two months in that room reduced me down to my most animal parts and though I always wanted to be heroic, I think that what I really am is something that is small and fur-covered, something whose strength lies in speed and cleverness and my racing rabbit heart.

“Julie,” says a voice –oh, thank God, familiar. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s me.”

How to explain how we met? How to explain how anything happens? I was somewhere and he was there too. The RAF and the Aerial Corps don’t exactly see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. Airmen have a touch of romance about them and, yes, some of them (Jamie and Maddie certainly included) talk about planes like they might be alive. But dragons really are alive and so Aviators, it seems, have given up a little bit of their hearts, forever and for always. They don’t bend terribly easily. They follow rules only when it suits them. 

My hand still trembling, I reach out and turn on the lamp. There he is, sitting there, rumpled and dishevelled from a night spent in the chair, dark hair ruffled across his forehead and his boots up on the bed. I have often seem him like this – formality is not something that sits particularly well with him (like most Aviators that I’ve met), but I will say that he cut a very dashing figure in dress greens that night, gold buttons and all. We danced and he introduced me to his dragon and his friend and everything changed so subtly that I barely felt it happen.

And here we are.

I should have known, though. I should have known that Maddie wouldn’t be the only one who’d come looking for me. 

“John,” I say, and I hope that, in that one word, he can hear how very, very glad I am to see him. I hold out my hand to him. I must look an absolute perfect fright. I can’t even bring myself to glance at the mirror, but I must have washed – my hair is still damp against the pillow and I don’t think I smell quite so bad. I don’t want to think about the bruises or the scars. Not yet. My vanity is still very strongly in place. 

“John, please come here.”

My bed is massive, one of the old four posters, and there’s easily enough room for the two of us. He lies down close, but not too close, not close enough to jaw my aching body. Slowly, carefully, he settle in against him, my head against his chest. He smells very familiar and very good – of Iskierka, his dragon, and of William Laurence who, as it turned out, was much, much more than just a friend.

To both of us, in the end.

“Who was it?” I ask him, my fingers stroking against his shirt. Airmen always smell of engine-oil, but Aviators have this edge of blood, this organic smell that comes from spending their entire lives sharing breathing space with living, breathing creatures, not machines. I close my eyes and breathe in John’s scent and try to forget the way that that place smelled. Though I don’t think I will ever forget the way it smelled, as long as I live. 

“Who was who, love?”  
“Who came?”  
“Hollin,” he says. “And Elsie. She’s a Winchester, so she’s small and quick.” He turns his head and kisses her hair. “I’d have bought Iskierka if I could. Admiral Roland had to all but threaten Temeraire with clapping Laurence in irons to stop him coming himself.”

“Will you thank him for me?” I ask. “Hollin, I mean.”

“You can thank him yourself,” he says. “He’s staying here tonight before they head back to Loch Lagan in the morning.”

I stifle a yawn against his chest. I have a hard time imagining ever sleeping through the night again, but, maybe, with John there, I won’t have such terrible, awful dreams.

“Where’s Will?” I ask him, my hand slipped up under his shirt, resting against the bare skin of his belly. I can feel the strong, steady thumping of his heart, so different from my own, which seems to chatter over and over in Morse code, saying sorry for all of the man things that have done.

“He’s around here somewhere,” says John, his voice little more than a whisper. “We didn’t want to crowd you. We didn’t know what you’d want.”

“You,” I say. “Both of you.”

I honestly never thought I’d see them again. I don’t really remember much after _KISS ME HARDY!_ but I do remember thinking, as I slipped, that I’d be good for my entire life I could just set eyes on them once more apiece before the end.

*

Meal-times are like a cross between a boarding school and a mess-hall, with all of the Craig Castle Irregulars lined up on either side of a long table. We adults sit together at one end – Jamie and Maddie on one side, John and Will at the other and me at the head. Because I am the guest of honour, I suppose. Because I was never supposed to be here at all.

Jamie and Maddie think they’re being subtle, I suppose. They’re careful not to touch, I notice, but there is a language in looks and I am trained in reading them, aren’t I? Everyone has secrets and you just need to know where they’re hiding. Neither of them are doing a very good job of hiding it, though. I know that he left her his boots. He’s got new ones, now, and Maddie’s still wearing his, even though she’s dressed in faded floral cotton, a tweed skirt – I think that might be one of his sweaters, too. I almost want to shake them and tell them that there’s no point in pussy-footing around; haven’t we learned that everything can go at any time, for any reason, even if you only do something small and stupid, like just looking the wrong way as you cross the street?

If they do want to hide it, they should take lessons from William and John. As far as I know, they’ve been intimate for years, a long time before they met me but I never saw it until afterwards, until after John leaned in and kissed me, with Will sitting on the other side. Me and Will took longer - he has more barriers to break – but we have so much in common, the way that we grew up, and, if John occasionally feels that, then he has more grace and manners than to ever let it show.

And I love them both so much.

“The Corps know you’re back, of course,” says Jamie, glancing at Will and then John in term, but the Air Force are still a little bit…hazy. We’re going to have to tell them so that they can debrief everyone that breathes. But not yet.”

“You didn’t tell them?” I say. The scale of the subterfuge is somewhat baffling; I’m still terrified of hanging for treason and the thought that they, the four of them, would protect me like that, at the risk of their own careers and their own _lives_ is enough to bring tears to my eyes.

“We’ll tell them,” says Will, offering me his hand. “Just not yet.”

Him, most of all, I love for this. I can see that it’s difficult. I can see that it pains him. I squeeze his fingers and then I bend my head and kiss his knuckles too.

“So,” I say, my voice wobbling but if anyone will forgive me for that, it is these people right here and I am _desperate_ to change the subject, “when are you going to make an honest man of our Pobble, Maddie?”

Maddie stares at me. Jamie chokes. John can’t hide his laughter, sliding down in his chair with one hand across his eyes.

Will just looks like he can’t believe that he knows any of us.

*

The bed is more than big enough for three. We lie together, as close as we get in the middle of the mattress. With John on one side and Will on the other, I feel safer than I ever thought I would again. At first, they both came to bed in undershirts, but I made them take them off. Sex is the furthest thing from my mind, but I want to feel their skin against me, anyway - to feel how warm they are, how solid and how close. My head rests against Will’s shoulder, my legs entwined with John’s. My wrists and throat are still red raw and I can’t help but think that I can’t look good to either of them, but they are so gentle, and neither of them flinch from looking at me. What it makes me is grateful, that out of all of the men that I might have fallen for, it was these two here.

“What are we going to do?” I ask them, right on the edge of falling asleep. Will’s fingers are in my hair, John’s lips graze my cheek and I lose track of where they start and where I begin. Where the hurting parts are and where I’m most broken.

“Figure it out as we go, I suppose,” says Will. “What else?”  
John has often referred to Will as a genius of disaster; if anyone can figure this out, I suppose it must be him. 

There’s a chill in the room; a shiver goes down my spine. John lifts his head, looking down at me with his brows drawn together.

“What? Are you cold, love?”

I turn my face against Will’s chest, closing my eyes and sinking into that familiar scent that’s so like John’s but entirely his own at the same time.

“You can close the window.” I’m already drifting, but I hear myself say it, clearly enough.   
He can close the window and lock it too.

I’m here. I’m here. I’m home.

*

I am not to be hanged for treason, though the boys may yet be court-marshalled themselves if they keep arriving from Loch Lagan the drop of a hat. From what I can tell, the fact that they weren’t both hanged or thrown into a cell for their part in rescuing me lands squarely at Jane Roland’s door. I’ve only met her once – Will introduced us – but I am so grateful for whatever it is that she’s done that I might just kiss her square on the mouth when I see her next, Admiral or not.

Healing is taking a long time. I still fear that I might be a wireless set that’s forever broken. Most nights, I still wake up screaming.

But the days are getting better.

Today, it’s warm enough to be outside. We sit on the grass between the two dragons, using them as wind-breaks. I am swaddled in blankets, a scarf of Stuart tartan around my neck. A little way away, Jamie and Maddie are sitting talking. As I watch, they shift position and he lies down, his fair head in her lap. She strokes her fingers through his hair, follows the line of his nose and the point of his chin. Watching them, I can feel my heart growing big enough to burst. They are two of my favourite people in the world and all I want for them is joy. Maddie is still wearing Jamie’s boots, I notice. Sometimes, I tease her that she’ll even wear them with her wedding dress. God, I hope that’s true. It would be the most romantic thing in the world. It would be perfect. It would be them. 

They’ve started to plan the wedding – they’d like to have it in the castle itself, in the Great Hall, with as many Beaufort-Stuarts as we can cram in and Maddie’s clan besides. Jamie will wear dress tartan, of course, and his RAF blues and the wedding ring won’t be on the traditional finger, but they will make do.

As a family, we’re legendary for that.   
Look at me. Look at my boys. Aren’t we living proof?

John is leaning against Iskierka’s side, careful of her spines; Will is with Temeraire, elbow resting against his forearm. In my blanket nest, I am huddled between the two because I try very hard not to play favourites or step on any toes. Still, today, Temeraire has been kind enough to let me choose what we are reading and so I’ve chosen an old favourite of mine.

Will clears his throat.

“Are we all ready?” he asks, glancing up at Temeraire, who has turned his head our way to watch. Iskierka is watching a flock of birds with interest; John idly strokes his hand against her scales. She steams. His hair is already hanging in damp curls.

“Who is the poet again, Laurence?” he asks. I never get tired of his voice, sonorous and deep. I feel like there is nowhere that I could in the world where that voice would not be able to reach me and tell me that it would be alright.

“A man named Ezra Pound, dear,” he says. “Dead now. This one is about a woman that he was very in love with. “

I might imagine it, but I think that he glances at me.

“Go on, Laurence,” says John, reaching out for my hand, and I twine our fingers together. “Let’s hear it.”  
“I hope there is killing in it!” pipes up Iskierka, whipping her head around to regard us all. “I cannot abide these poems that are all romance and declarations of love!”

“Enough, love,” says John, peaceably. “Let him read.”  
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“Portrait D’un Femme,” says Will. “By Ezra Pound. Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea. London has swept about you this score of years and bright ships left you this or that in fee.”

I close my eyes and listen to Will read and pretend that there is no such place as France.

*

On her wedding day, Maddie is so beautiful that my much-challenged heart can hardly stand it. She has a sash of Stuart tartan (old, packed away from our parents’ wedding); her wedding dress is stitched from parachute silk (new, filched from Temeraire’s harness); jewels in her hair (borrowed, lent by Iskierka with my express word that I will return them immediately in the morning) and, beneath her skirt, Jamie’s boots are as scuffed as ever.

I am dressed in WAF blue, also in my tartan, tiny flowers in my hair and I could not be further from that girl who stumbled across that bridge, who flung my arms wide and leapt. The boys are there, in dress uniform, already in the hall. The dragons have begged to be allowed to watch through the windows.

I take hold of Maddie’s hands and kiss her cheeks, one and then the other. She is my very best friend, entirely the best thing about me and now she will be married to my brother, which is exactly the same as being a sister and I have all of these wonderful brothers, but I have never had one of those. It feels like the most marvellous gift in the world. And we are so close to Christmas.

“You know that place between sleep and awake?” I say, and I think that Maddie’s known Beaufort-Stuarts for long enough that she’ll know ‘Peter Pan’ when she hears it. “That place where you can still remember dreaming?” I try so very, very hard to keep from crying but, in the end, I can’t quite avoid it. For two months, I thought of Maddie so often, and I wrote all of that down for her and I will never see those pages again, but it doesn’t matter, because we have the chance for more stories and everything has a chance to still change in the telling. I throw my arms around her and whisper the last part into her hair. 

_That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting._

The heavy doors of the hall are opened, the pipers are playing and I can see my brothers, all of them, and John and Will and my mother and all of the people who I love desperately and thought I would never see ever again. 

We walk down the aisle between the chairs, Maddie and me together, towards Jamie, who is smiling so brightly it’s like all of the light in the room is coming from just him. Here we all are, all of us together, and Maddie and Jamie will be so happy and I will be alright too, with my boys and their dragons and all of that love. Because this is what there was to come back to. The world ended and started again in a heartbeat. I would have done anything to see them again. I would have said anything. And I will love that man Hollin and his darling little dragon for my entire life, however much longer I have.

It doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that we are all here now. All of us together.  
All of the windows are shut.


End file.
